Daily Review with Clay and Buck - Jul 13 2026

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Your medical freedom is worth protecting. That's why Jase is offering massive savings on life-saving medications this July. Enjoy membership to Jace Plus for just $17.76 for the entire year, where you'll receive ongoing discounts and 24-7 access to a first aid helpline all year round. You'll also find special pricing on the Jace case, Jace trauma, Ivermectin, and more medical tools to keep you and your loved ones emergency ready. The sale ends July 31st. Visit jace.com. That's jase.com to learn more and save on peace of mind. Welcome in Monday edition, Clay and Buck. We have got a ton of big stories to be tracking with all of you. Buck is traveling. Be with me tomorrow in our New York City studio. I am going to be headed up there a little bit later today. We've got a bunch of big, cool, good continued growth for the radio show that we are going to be working on in New York tomorrow. So that is on the horizon. But in the meantime, Lindsey Graham, 71 years old, dies over the weekend of a heart attack, aortic rupture, according to reports. Mitch McConnell, proof of life Washington Post Sports Page photo, 84 years old, the senator from Kentucky. This is unfortunately becoming all too common as we have a lot of political leaders in their 70s and in their 80s and health-related issues can emerge very rapidly, as all of you know, for people who are in those age ranges. This is particularly dangerous. uh when it comes to everything having to do with control of the senate and also control of the house in both directions because frankly we are nearly in a 50 50 divided government so health related concerns can be monumental But let's dive into Senator Lindsey Graham's life as he has been praised across the entire political spectrum for being a unique political talent who also was able to work across the aisle to get things done throughout the course of his entire tenure in office. And we have a bunch of different clips that we want to play.

as we honor the life of Senator Lindsey Graham. Here was President Trump talking about his relationship with Senator Lindsey Graham. This was this morning on Fox and Friends, cut one Trump on running against Lindsey Graham for president back in the 2016 presidential cycle. There were actually 18 people running for president. A couple of dropped out very early. And he was one of them, one of them running. And he was totally against me. I mean, he was fighting me. He sort of used me as the example because I was leading in the polls by a lot. And he said, I'll get you in South Carolina. I'm going to get you in South Carolina. That didn't work out too well. I joke about it. And it was like, it was amazing. Actually, the whole thing was amazing. Hey, the whole career was amazing. But Lindsay was a big part of it because once that ended, he left. race. And once that ended, I became really good friends with him. Okay, President Trump on Lindsey Graham. He also was on Meet the Press. Let's play a couple of these different cuts of President Trump talking about Lindsey Graham. Here he is on Meet the Press with Kristen Welker cut eight. So what makes it even stranger is that I got a call last night sometime at, you know, the early evening, maybe in the sevens. He got back, said he just landed from Ukraine. I said, that's a long trip to make it. He said, he sounded a little tired, but perfect, but a little bit tired. I had a right to be. He wanted to pass the Save America Act. And I said, well, we're going to get it done, Lindsay. We're going to get it done. I'll see you like soon. We thought we might even meet today. And then that was it. And that was, you know, very around the time. It couldn't have been much longer. It could have been his last call. I don't know exactly. I got a message about 1 o'clock in the morning from one of the people in his office that he had passed away. I said, you got, I can't believe it. He was like a member of the family to me. It's very tough, actually. Okay, that was cut eight. That's President Trump on Lindsey Graham. Here he is again, cut nine on the phone. Graham said, I feel good, but I'm tired. Mr. President, it is just extraordinary. You just spoke with him last night. His office says he passed away from a brief and sudden illness. Are you learning any more details about... How and why he may have passed? Did he tell you anything in that phone call, Mr. President, about not feeling well? No, he said he's a little tired. It went to a long trip, you know, many hours. And he had just gotten back. And I mean, it must have been right after that because I understand the police or whoever it is came there at about 7.30, 8 o'clock in the evening, something like that. So somebody notified him. But no, he felt okay. I mean, I actually on the... On the call, he told me, Chris, and he said, you know, I feel good, but I'm tired.

Okay, we'll play a couple more of these cuts, but in the meantime, I wanted to go and play Lindsey Graham. To me, his finest hour in recent history, September 27th, 2018, during a confirmation hearing. Here he is, I remember this moment. I bet very many of you remember this moment as well. Lindsey Graham going to bat for Brett Kavanaugh amid all of the totally... sham BS charges. I had to be careful there that were alleged against Brett Kavanaugh. Lindsey Graham cut through the noise and called it out for what it was totally. A sham cut six. If you wanted an FBI investigation, you could have come to us. What you want to do is destroy this guy's life, hold this seat open, and hope you went in 2020. You've said that, not me. You've got nothing to apologize for. When you see Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, tell him that Lindsay said all over, because I voted for them. I would never do to them what you've done to this guy. This is the most unethical sham. Since I've been in politics, and if you really wanted to know the truth, you sure as hell wouldn't have done what you've done to this guy. Are you a gang rapist? No. I cannot imagine what you and your family have gone through. Boy, y'all want power. God, I hope you never get it. I hope the American people can see through this sham. Final public, that was just perfect. And I remember watching that live during those hearings and saying, thank the Lord, someone is just calling this out with the right amount of outrage, unscripted speaking direct to the American public. And I do think that commentary, which is fairly rare in the United States Senate, actually did help to confirm Brett Kavanaugh. Because if you remember at that point in time, There was a lot of trepidation on the Republican side about aggressively defending Brett Kavanaugh. We were just kind of coming into that whole broken Me Too era where if a woman says it, it's true. Remember hashtag believe all women. Even when you looked at the evidence, you said, wait a minute, this doesn't add up. There's no truth to this at all. She doesn't know what year it happened. She doesn't know what house it happened in. There are no witnesses that support anything that she's saying. All of those things proved that this was, in fact, a sham. But a lot of people were cowards. And a lot of politicians were cowards about even discussing it. And Lindsey Graham unscripted off the cuff in that Senate hearing with the righteous indignation and anger, I think helped to ensure that Brett Kavanaugh was on the Supreme Court and was confirmed. Here he is the final public remarks from Lindsey Graham. He was working on trying to get Saudi Arabia to normalize relations.

with uh... israel try to bring greater peace to the middle east and he was working on trying to end the war in ukraine here he is cut five i've never been more optimistic than i am today that we have the formula to end this war Help Ukraine be more lethal. Let those supporting Russia to know it's going to be a price to be paid if you keep doing it. And to try to find the off-ramp, not to humiliate Vladimir Putin, but to end this war so that Ukraine will thrive and survive. Okay, that was the final public comments of Lindsey Graham. I'm presuming that was in Ukraine. It sounded like the bells tolling there in the background team. Let me know if I'm wrong on that. But I'm betting that he was talking to the media and the press in Ukraine before he flew back. They say that it was a brief and sudden illness. That was the initial report. Then later yesterday, they came out and said that he had had a heart attack and an aortic rupture. Here is Alex Hogan on Fox News giving that report cut 13. It was early this morning that the senator's team, their official office, releasing that he had died of what they are calling a brief and sudden illness. The FBI are at Senator Graham's residence, although there is no indication of foul play according to the federal law enforcement. Earlier today, FBI Director Kash Patel said that the FBI would assist local authorities and make every resource available. And again, Lindsey Graham has been praised across the political spectrum. Lots of Democrats coming out alongside of many Republicans. There's a big decision to make in South Carolina about who is going to be the next senator there. President Trump says he has an idea of who that might be. There are lots of discussions, potentially even including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The governor of South Carolina will appoint an interim. In the meantime, Lindsey Graham had just won the Republican nomination to serve for six more years. Okay, that's all the background. That was shocking news to wake up to yesterday. I'm going to be honest with y'all. When this news came out on our show text thread, my initial response was, is there any involvement of Russia? Is there any involvement of Iran? I bet that a lot of you also had that same reaction. Now, they're going to test toxicology, make sure that there's nothing else here, and that this was what it appears to have been based on reports, just a sudden heart attack, aortic rupture that occurs far too frequently. Many of you with friends and family in your life have had people who were otherwise doing well, and then they just had a heart attack and we lost them. And so the evidence right now would support that's exactly what's happened with Lindsey Graham. But when I saw this news come down on Sunday morning, and they said it was a brief and sudden illness, given all that we have seen in the United States of late, my initial reaction was skepticism. And I would imagine there were lots of you who had that initial reaction to.

And to me, it builds on what we saw and what we discussed to a large extent last week on this program, which was everything surrounding Charlie Kirk, the preliminary hearing that's taking place in Utah, where a lot of people don't believe that Charlie Kirk was killed by Tyler Robinson. Now, I do believe that Charlie Kirk was killed by Tyler Robinson. Today is also the two-year anniversary of the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania that nearly took President Trump's life. We still do not know very much about that shooter or his motivations. He largely seems to be an enigma. He's a ghost. We don't know very much about him. I think all this is directly connected to COVID. And I'm going to build on this during the course of the first hour. I know Buck would sign off on a lot of this. He's going to be with me tomorrow. Every COVID conspiracy that you were not allowed to discuss in public being proven to be true has fundamentally broken the trust to a degree that I've never experienced in my life between the public and elected officials. People in positions of power in government, people in positions of power in media. A lot of you just do not trust what you are told, period. I get it. I get it, I get it, I get it. Every conspiracy is not true. But the number of conspiracies that were proven true during COVID has created a world where, in conjunction with social media and the incentive structure there to question everything, A lot of us, and I'll put myself in this camp, are just immediately skeptical when we hear stories. And I'm going to open up phone lines, 800, 282, 282, 2802. I'm going to allow you guys to weigh in. We're going to talk about the implications of Lindsey Graham's death as it goes forward, but also the bigger picture story here. We certainly want Lindsey Graham and his family to our thoughts, prayers, condolences. Everything goes to them. But I do think it's connected to Charlie Kirk. I think it's connected to the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania. I think everything now goes back to COVID. And there is a deep... long-lasting lack of public trust in people in positions of power that has not been rectified in the wake of COVID. And this is why failure to prosecute anybody for any of the lies that they told us, Dr. Anthony Fauci, foremost among them, has led to a world where a lot of people of all different political persuasions in the wake of COVID, just do not trust anything that anybody in a position of power is telling them. And that's a big deal. And it's going to have major lasting consequences for years into the future. I think that many of you are nodding along with me right now. And I'm just being honest with you. I get it.

Buck said, hey, I think it was a heart attack. Buck was all in on it was a heart attack right up the top. Team knows on the social media feed. I said, this is suspicious to me. We know Russia has killed a lot of people that have been opponents. We know certainly that Iran is trying to kill the president of the United States right now. When a high-placed figure in our government dies, my first thought is not that it was natural causes, that it was lacking in foul play. It appears the evidence supports that. But again, I think that's directly connected to all the lies we were told in COVID. And I don't think we've come through the turmoil and trauma of COVID in a way that this nation is very healthy. We'll talk about it. Do you own a business? You know all about business insurance. I've run a bunch of businesses over my life. I know how frustrating business insurance can be figuring out what's covered, what's the right choice, understanding what you need, and how to make sure that you are covered to the best of your ability. Super Sure is a super agency built for business owners year-round support for you and your team licensed in every state at supershore.com slash clay. You can access tools like fine print facts that translate your current policy into plain English so you see what's covered, what's not. Plus, SuperShore gives you access to their business value calculator so you can estimate what your business is worth so you know what actually needs protecting. Go to supershore.com slash clay, one superagency, one powerful platform. That's supershore.com slash clay. paid for by Super Sure Insurance Agency LLC, a licensed insurance agency. Common sense never sounded so good. Clay and Buck, owning the airwaves. Your medical freedom is worth protecting. That's why Jace is offering massive savings on life-saving medications this July. Enjoy membership to Jace Plus for just $17.76 for the entire year, where you'll receive ongoing discounts and 24-7 access to a first aid helpline all year round. You'll also find special pricing on the Jace case, Jace trauma, Ivermectin, and more medical tools to keep you and your loved ones emergency ready. The sale ends July 31st. Visit jace.com. That's jase.com to learn more and save on peace of mind. Welcome back in. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us. We are rolling through our number two Monday edition of Clay and Buck. Buck is traveling. We will be together in New York City tomorrow, taking care of a lot of good growth strategies for the program. And we will update you on some of that then.

Okay, several different stories that we are tracking. Lindsey Graham unexpectedly dies on Sunday. We become aware that he had a brief and sudden illness is the initial report that he then dies of a heart attack and aortic rupture. A report out there from Harris Faulkner that we just aired. And then President Trump followed up with saying it publicly. At 4 p.m. Eastern today in South Carolina, governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster, expected to announce that Lindsey Graham's sister, Darlene, will fill out the remainder of his time before they have a special election to pick a new senator for South Carolina. Lindsey Graham had just won the primary last month. And so there is going to be a short, rapid battle. to see who is the next senator from south carolina as many people will likely be tossing their name into that hat and it could be a very rapid primary to pick a new nominee uh and then the election in november would lead to a new senator being sworn in in january uh presumably. And some of you may be more experts on South Carolina law than I am. But again, Lindsey Graham had recently won the primary and they are going to have a special election. I will look up some of the names and think about where that could go. There is some talk that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. is potentially going to toss his name into the mix in the Senate. He is from South Carolina. He has done a very good job as Treasury Secretary. I don't know that that is going to be the case, but there are lots of people right now saying that they would like for him to potentially put his name into the mix in South Carolina. I will look up in real time what the prediction markets are telling us about who the next senator of South Carolina may be. But we are tracking that story. I'll let you know that answer here in a minute. Mitch McConnell, a proof of life. There has been discussion. A lot of you asking, where has Mitch McConnell been? He posted a photo. His staff did alongside of his wife with the front page of the Washington Post there with him. saying that he was receiving treatment, that he had passed out for a short period of time, that he then got pneumonia. And he is 84 years old. He is going to be stepping down in January. There is a race that Andy Barr has already won the Republican primary in the state of Kentucky. Andy Barr will be the next senator from the state of Kentucky. But he will not be sworn in until January. There has been a lot of questions about what was going on with Mitch McConnell's health. All of this means that we are going to be in a position where it is very, very difficult to pass anything. As I have told you, there are at least three Republican senators who are stepping down. We don't have a senator right now from South Carolina. We don't have a senator from Kentucky who is capable of passing a vote.

Already the margin was slim. JD Vance can break the tie 50-50, but to a large extent, our government is frozen. Now, every time we have a big picture conversation about this, a lot of people get very uncomfortable with the reality that our government and the people who represent us in that government are often very old. We do not have term limits or age requirements on the back end for our government. President Trump just turned 80. He's doing very well. Joe Biden? Not so well. Certainly Mitch McConnell, not very well. This is a Democrat and Republican issue. Diane Feinstein on the Democrat side served. She had no idea what was going on. There are a lot of people who refused to leave. their positions in the government. And when you're in your 70s and 80s, health-related concerns can emerge rapidly like we just saw with Lindsey Graham, who by the way, at 71 years old, I would think to a large extent, lots of people thought he was very healthy. But it is the chance that it is the case that when you get into your 70s and 80s, your odds of having health-related concerns emerge rapidly, that you have no idea might be an issue, does become more and more of a significant threat. And our government being led as it is in basically a 50-50 fashion. We're now in a really, really tough position as it pertains to trying to get anything passed in the Senate or trying to get anything past at all in how this is all going to shake out. Right now, there are a bunch of names that are being talked about in South Carolina. I said that I would mention several of them. Russell Fry, Ralph Norman, Pamela Greg Abbott, Mark Lynch, Trey Gowdy. Nancy Mace, Scott Bessent, Nikki Haley, there are a lot of different names connected to South Carolina in the Republican Party that could decide to put their name into this Republican primary. So that is the latest there. On the Strait of Hormuz situation. I mentioned this. Trump says that he's going to put a U.S. Navy blockade back in place and that he, meaning the United States government, is now going to bring to bear a 20% tax on goods in the Strait of Hormuz. And that that would mean that we are going to establish basically that we have complete and total control over everything related to this. So that is something to pay attention to. And I've been talking about the fact that I think that so much of this, you just heard a caller as we finished the last hour going on like a filibuster about how he didn't believe that Tyler Robinson killed Charlie Kirk. And a bunch of you want to weigh in on that. I'll take some of your calls. We're also scheduled to be joined by Ryan Gerdesky at the bottom of this hour.

I mentioned I'm going to talk a little bit in the third hour. I'm going to go old school with you. If you watch on video, you're going to see that I have a bunch of newspapers always laying out on my desk. I'm going to dive into a question about how important is patriotism to you. And how proud are you of United States history? This is from the Wall Street Journal. In the third hour of the program, I'm fired up about this. So just a little bit of a preview of the fact that I'm going to talk about that some when we go forward. But I did want to mention something else that is out there circulating in the cosmos that I saw from my friend in Wokeness. And I shared it over the weekend, and I do think it's worth having a discussion about because I thought it was so well said. We spend a lot of time in this country. Indeed, this Wall Street Journal article has a question about, hey, are we a place that is where people are judged by the color of their skin or the content of their character? And we flipped. 60-40 people said content of character is more important than color of skin. Now, that was in 2010. Now, as I speak to you in 26, it's now 60-40 the other direction. So race relations were getting better and better and better. And I think most of you out there nodding along saying, yeah, I kind of agree with that. And then starting around the time that Obama was in his second term. And we started with the Ferguson lies, right, the Michael Brown hands up, don't shoot, leading all through the George Floyd COVID insanity. Around that time, everything flipped. And I think it was social media, but I also think this is a really good graphic from end-wokeness that he shared. And I shared it with all of you. And I'm hitting a retweet on that right now. So if you want to go see it at Clay Travis, you can go see it on my Twitter feed. Interracial violence, narrative versus reality. And I'm seeing a lot of these stories because they had some of those Patriot front guys that I actually think should be investigated because a part of me thinks the Southern Poverty Law Center is paying for them like they were paying for all the KKK back in the day. Interracial violence, reality versus the way the media covers it. And you really need to see this graphic. But we will share it from Clay and Buck, too. Black violence against white people. First of all, most racial, most violence is by members of your own racial group.

That is, if you are black, you are likely to be murdered by someone who is black. If you are white, you're likely to be murdered by somebody who is white. If, in fact, it says every woman who watches Lifetime knows, sometimes it's your husband. Every woman is secretly afraid that her husband's going to kill her. That's basically the entire lifetime television network base of viewership. If you're Hispanic, you're most likely to be killed by somebody who's Hispanic. If you're Asian, you're most likely to be killed by somebody who's Asian, right? But in the rare event, when race is different, right, white versus black, Asian versus Hispanic, whatever it might be, do you know that white on black violence is one-tenth of black on white violence? In other words, if you want to focus on racial violence, And you want to say, hey, all I care about is black people hurting white people or white people hurting black people. This is justice statistics. Black on white crime, 547,948. White on black crime, 5978. What is the media cover? I was looking at this graphic and I'm wondering why has racial relationship gotten worse since 2010 or 2012? White people are 10 times as likely, according to this graphic, to be victims of black violence. Black people harming white people. Then white people are to harm black people. What percentage of the American public do you think knows that? The only thing the media covers, first of all, if you're black and you commit a violent crime against another black person, the media mostly doesn't cover it. It's very common in Chicago, black on black violence, New York City, Washington, D.C. Big city, violence, overwhelmingly black on black. It doesn't even get a blip of coverage because it's so common. White person is even alleged to have done something to a black person. It leads the news forever. I'll give you an example. This awful story of the high school kid that got stabbed down in Texas, black kid. 35 years in prison, stabs Austin Metcalf, white track athlete, no defense really. Jury says, hey, you're going to go to prison for 35 years. That doesn't seem like enough to me. He's eligible for parole after 17 years. I think I was out of town when all that was happening. Buck talked about it quite a lot. Got some coverage because it was teenagers, Texas. There was, oh, there was an allegation that it was a racial defense, right? Imagine how that story would have been covered if a white kid had stabbed to death, a black kid at a track meet. You would have been unable to escape it.

The media isn't giving you an accurate impression of what's actually going on. And I think the tangible result is that race relations have actually gotten way worse. Because in the identity politics worldview, black people, a lot of them, think that white people are killing them all the time. They think police, George Floyd, is happening every day. Because of the way the media covers it, it's inescapable. And I actually think race relations would be way better if we actually talked about what the data shows. Who actually is committing murder? Who's actually being murdered? And how do we make the murder rate overall lowered? This is an example of the way the media covers this story. I give in wokeness credit. I'll talk about this some with Ryan Gurdeski. is completely not representative of what's actually happening in the country. And in fact, if we wanted, look, you give me a magic wand. You know what I wish I could create? The entire nation has the same murder rate as Asian murder rates. In general, Asian people don't get murdered. Their data, least violent ethnic group by far. If the entire nation, I think it's an aspirational goal, I think it's something we should aspire to do. If the entire nation had the murder rate that exists among the Asian community in the United States, murder would almost not exist in this country. It seems like an aspirational goal. If we want to solve the murder rate in the country, what it's going to mean is we're going to have to put a lot more black guys who overwhelmingly are committing murder in prison, and we're going to have to protect a lot more innocent black families from having their kids killed by violent black predators. That's the reality. Yet nobody wants to have the conversation based on the actual data. The media lies, and it's how Joe Biden ends up saying the biggest threat the nation faces is white supremacy. Remember when he said that? It's one of the craziest arguments in the history of the presidency. I want to tell you, super sure, can make a huge difference for you. If you're a small business owner, if you have 25 or more employees, if you're part of the management structure for a small business, do you have the right insurance or not? You may well not know at all, and you could make a huge difference. if you went to supershore.com right now and use my name Clay. You could save a bundle as part of this process. You can get hooked up right now at SuperShore. Go right now to this website, supershore.com. Use my name Clay to see why growing businesses are moving beyond traditional brokers. SuperShore.com slash clay. They can save you a ton.

paid for by Super Shore Insurance Agency LLC, a licensed insurance agency. If you truly care, pass along this common sense to family and friends. Clay and Buck, owning the airway. Welcome back in Clay and Buck. We are rolling through the Monday edition of the program. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us. Join now by our friend Ryan Gurdesky, who is a part of the Clay and Buck podcast network. and he is working through a huge variety of different topics on a day-to-day basis. Ryan, let's, I was just talking, I want to start with this. You're getting a little bit of a curbel. I don't know that you even expect this, but I know you're a data guy. There was a viral tweet from end-wokeness talking about race and crime. and which races interracially commit crimes. And I was just talking about it. We've seen, like the Wall Street Journal had a poll that came out and said most people about 2010, 60-40, believed that Americans were primarily being judged by the content of their character, not the color of their skin. A little bit over a decade later, it's now flipped. And... People believe that racism is a way bigger story. Does it feel to you like the media largely in the way that they have covered things, starting with Ferguson, has created way more division among the races and also not accurately reflected what the data on crime truly shows? Yeah, there's a data analyst named Zach Goldberg. He was from the University of Atlanta. Brilliant, brilliant guy. We've had him on the podcast before. Highly autistic but brilliant. And he chronicled something called The Great Awakening. I think he actually coined the term. And what he did was he looked at terms like the term like whiteness, racism, blackness, you know, white hierarchy, all those words that you kind of didn't hear much of before 2014. And he just chronicled all the major newspapers in this country and major television networks, news networks. And how often they said them before or after 2014 and 2013. And it is a complete hockey stick. It just explodes across there to the point where I think like one of those terms was used like in 2% of all New York Times articles in one given year, which if you think of everything covered in the Times from the earthquakes in Venezuela to its sports, it's quite a number of things for 2% to be covering race. And that certainly added to it. And then the complete misunderstanding and misrepresentation of race and crime by raw numbers, whites obviously commit more crimes because there's more white people. But per capita, blacks in America have a comical level of, you know, crime as far as violent crime in this country goes. Okay, so I was just talking about that. Now, let's go into the situation in the wake of Lindsey Graham's death. Reports are that Darlene, his sister, is going to be elevated. There's going to be a primary there. I'm sure you saw Mitch McConnell. What I'm saying is, basically, unfortunately, it looked like a proof of life hostage photo where he's 84 years old, and he's showing that he has, like, the sports page from the Washington Post from that day. Because otherwise people would say, like, that's not real.

Like, they just, if you look at that photo, they just kind of draped the sports section on his lap in that photo. And, I mean, it's crazy that this is where we are. But given the fact that we only had a 5347 situation in there in the first place, how difficult is it going to be to get anything past, including potentially A.Todd Blanche, anything else out there based on what you're seeing from the day. Well, I think they're going to be able to put his sister in fairly quickly. She doesn't seem like she, I mean, she's given very little media interviews. So I don't think she has the intention of running for a full term. I think it's just to fill out the rest of the year. So if they get her in fairly quickly, and she'll probably just vote with the Republicans. This is my guess. I don't imagine she's going to have, you know, an independent voice all of a sudden. She's not going to turn into Lisa Murkowski or Susan Collins. I think it'll be barely easy to get. Todd Lanchin there, which is probably one of the most important appointments aside from the judges that we could do right now. Remember, Mitch McConnell in the last year or so has been more of us born in the side for President Trump, and he's been an active supporter of a lot of his agenda. So I don't think Mitch McConnell not being there is going to stop much as long as they can get Graham's sister in as fast as possible. Graham Platner out. This has been a huge topic over the last several weeks. Now they're going to have some sort of... I've listened to this show to all your beliefs that there was a bag of money waiting for him. I still think that the only thing that explains his dropping out is that he got paid off. I mean, just being honest with you. I would never... What's that? I know you are. I know you're being honest. Yeah, no, I would never... What else is he going to do? Sometimes people drop out. They say, hey, it's not your time. You're going to have an opportunity to run again. Graham Platner is going to go back to being a mostly unsuccessful oyster farmer that only has one customer, his mom. It's not as if he goes to another, like, oh, okay, I'm not going to run for the Senate. I'll be CEO of this company. I will go and raise my eight kids, right? Like, I've got a really fulfilling life elsewhere. Wait, is he going to go back to posting on Reddit forums and, like, just kind of being a narrative well? Like, I don't see why he would give this up. Go back to being an active socialist, you know, communist revolutionary. I don't know. Remember, he's from an enormously wealthy family. He doesn't really need to work. Like we discovered that the one guy, the guy who helped get Graham Platner to run was the heir to the Toys R Us fortune. So, I mean, it is a lot of times these revolutionaries come from very, very wealthy upbringings. So what do you think this does to the odds? I was reading that rapid fire replacements like this. I think there haven't been very many. I think they said there's been nine in recent history. Two of them have gone on to win, even notwithstanding. Does this help hurt? What would you assess? How would you assess Susan Collins' odds now?

Well, Susan Collins is actually performing right now better in the polling than she had previously when Graham Platner had first announced before, obviously, the scandals had. But when Graham Platner at first announced, she was down substantially in these polls. Now she's basically tied with everybody across every single possible opponent that she has. It really, I think, depends on which Democrats end up nominating to change out Graham Platner. I think a number of them will have the problem that they're going to have the stench of platinum because they were out there vocally supporting platinum, even after the first list of allegations came out from the New York Times. So I think they're going to have that problem kind of around their neck. And Susan Collins has been very quiet. She's been, you know, steady as always. And there's a reason she's very, very strong. I talked to some people in Maine, and I asked them, what is Susan Collins' appeal in that state? And they said, basically, if you want anything done for your constituent services, no matter where you live in the state, you go to Susan Collins, and she's always delivered. And I think that right now she's trying to prove that and just prove that she is the steady hand that's always been there. Do you think it's going to be effective at all the argument, hey, this is a Kamala Harris Joe Biden 2.0, that they're trying to get rid of Graham Platner because really they see he can't win, not because they're actually concerned about any of these sexual harassment allegations, sexual assault allegations, the Nazi tattoo, all of the things that obviously have stacked up against him? Do you think that is just a function of... of the electability issues, and will that actually matter? Because I've said on the show, you point out you've been listening. Look, they could basically run anyone as long as he's anti-Trump or she is anti-Trump, 47, 48 percent of main voters are going to show up and pull the lever for them. How much does the nominee even matter at this point? It matters. For someone like Susan, remember Susan Collins is, for most of the time that she has run, Susan Collins has won every county in the state. She's enormously popular in that state. Even today, even with opinion polling, she's even being a Republican. She's still more popular than the president by close to 20 points. And people do not have a negative opinion overall about her, that she's, you know, this controversial figure. I think the question is, is if she, if they pick somebody who is too toxic, too closely aligned to... to the far left of that state, it will beg questions out of people like Angus King. Angus King is the independent co-republic, co-senitor with Susan Collins. Remember, Maine has not elected a Democrat to the Senate in decades and decades and decades. I think that it will also come into question is how much money are they going to pour in resources in Maine versus having to spend it in Michigan if they elect a far left nominee and North Carolina. There's only so many resources out there. You know, Sarah Gideon, when she ran with tens of millions of more dollars, she only won two counties against Susan Collins. That was Susan's closest election that she ever had. So.

I think that a big question will come to that. And then the question for a grand platinum voters is if they pick someone who's more moderate, do they just sit out the election and say you deserve, you deserve everything you're getting? That former Joy Reid, the former MSNBC host, said if they pick anybody who it doesn't speak out against Apex from the moment they're running, go vote for Susan Collins. So there's a lot of defection within the Democratic Party where they thought they were going to get. you know, Graham Platner was going to be a revolutionary figure, almost like Bernie himself. And if they feel even slightly betrayed, don't underestimate the fact that some will, you know, hold their noses and either vote for Susan Collins or not vote at all. Last question for you. We have an acting attorney general and interim attorney general as Pam Bondi is down. Todd Blanche was elevated. They're now, they need to get him, go ahead and get him confirmed. How difficult do you think that's going to be? I mean, he doesn't seem, I haven't overwhelmingly following it, but 53 votes, I imagine, unless there's something remarkably controversial on him, he'll probably pick up better men too, and I don't think it'd be that hard to do. What else should we know from your perspective that you're paying attention to from a data perspective? We encourage everybody to go subscribe. Your show is doing gangbusters. I think a lot of people are very interested in the data undergirding so many of these stories. Well, the story I have today is actually non-political, but it's very, very interesting. The percentage of senior citizens who are developing Alzheimer's is actually shrinking in every single year. So the whole breakdown of why is shrinking, how it's shrinking, and now we have all this new information of every decade of your life, what will make you more or less likely to develop Alzheimer's. If you are middle age, the number one cause of having Alzheimer's aside from genetics is if you were depressed in your middle age. So things that happen decades before that affect that. It's a really interesting episode. And then the following episode, we're going to be talking about the abolishing of property taxes across the states and all the states looking to do that. Awesome. That sounds super interesting. Ryan, keep up the good work. We appreciate the time. Thank you. I want to tell all of you out there if you love to eat steak as much as I love to eat steak. And if you like fresh meat that is born and raised here in the good old United States, that can make a tremendous difference for you, too. Get signed up for good ranchers. Family run company, Ben and his wife Corley. They are doing phenomenal work. It all comes right here in the United States. Good fresh meat for all of you. This month, they're celebrating all 50 states with $50 off your first order. Just visit Good Ranchers and use my name Clay and you get $50 off everything. Ben and his wife, Corley, they founded this company. They got four young kids. They wanted to be able to give their kids fresh. food that is no antibiotics no added hormones right here from the USA from american ranchers it's great product we eat it all the time in the Travis household you are going to love it great value good ranchers dot com my name clay that's good ranchers dot com code clay for 50 bucks off

Miss the show while you're on the go. Wind down your day with the daily review podcast. Find it on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. Your medical freedom is worth protecting. That's why Jase is offering massive savings on life-saving medications this July. Enjoy membership to Jace Plus for just $17.76 for the entire year, where you'll receive ongoing discounts and 24-7 access to a first aid helpline all year round. You'll also find special pricing on the Jace case, Jace trauma, Ivermectin, and more medical tools to keep you and your loved ones emergency ready. The sale ends July 31st. Visit jace.com. That's jase.com to learn more and save on peace of mind. Welcome in. Hour number three, Clay and Buck. Appreciate all of you hanging out with us. Buck will be back with me tomorrow. We will be in New York City together as we will be taking care of a lot of different. Challenging media-related opportunities. We have been talking quite a lot about the latest in Iran, about the death of Lindsey Graham unexpectedly over the weekend and the overall impact of that death. And I did want to dive in here. Over the weekend, I was reading, Catching up on my Wall Street Journal reading. Like to read the print publication of the Wall Street Journal. For those of you who are watching on video, as increasing numbers are of you are, as we are slowly starting to work in three hours of live video for everybody to be able to watch. Go subscribe to our YouTube channel. Make sure that you don't miss that. And there's a poll that they ran for America 250. Wall Street Journal did. And I read this and I said, my goodness, this matters so much. And I want to make sure I share the results with everybody as we've been celebrating America 250. But I also think it tells an important story, which is no politician. No matter how good can save us from the culture that we have created. And the headline of this article, and again, I'm old school. I like to read my print newspapers. Poll finds America in dark mood at 250. And the first two questions are so integral and directly connected. I just felt that I had to share them with you. How important is patriotism to you? And it breaks it down from age. But the second question is, how proud are you of United States history? And I want to start with that second one. I talked off the top of the program about Lindsey Graham. And one of the big topics that we kind of dove into and a lot of you were reacting to is the question of,

whether or not you trust the leaders of America to be honest with you. And I said off to start of the show, for those of you who weren't listening, encourage you to go download the podcast, maybe go subscribe to YouTube. I said off the top, and I tweeted this too, and some of you may have seen the tweet, the legacy of COVID that is going to be the most lasting. is not the kids who lost all of the time in education, unfortunate and significant as that is. And it's not even going to be all of the additional debt that we took out in expanding the government, which has led us to $40 trillion in national debt as significant as that is. We would still be deep in national debt. And unfortunately, I think our education department in terms of educating kids would still be struggling. No one trusts the government. And I said off the top of the show, when I saw that Lindsey Graham had died unexpectedly and that he had just come from Ukraine and that he was working hard to try to solve the issues. with peace in the Middle East. My first thought was Russia or Iran killed him. That was my first thought. When I saw that people said he died unexpectedly and I saw the report that he had been talking to President Trump just a few hours before. Now, they say that he had a heart attack and they are going to dive through and examine all of it. They say he had an aortic rupture. And at 71 years old, he might well have had, as unfortunately some of you, many of you, have experienced in your families and friends, he might have just had an unexpected heart-related condition that killed him almost instantly. It might well be the case. And in fact, the evidence all supports that that's what happened. But my first thought was, there's something else going on here. And I talked about it with the Charlie Kirk case. And I think you can go into any of these stories. And they're all deeply rooted in distrust for the United States government because every conspiracy theory that they told you you weren't allowed to talk about during COVID ended up being true. And so it's the two-year anniversary of Butler, Pennsylvania, as I was telling all of you. The near death of Donald Trump. A lot of you still don't believe that that random 21-year-old or whatever the heck he was climbed up on the roof and got that good of a shot at the president of the United States, and it wasn't a part of something bigger. Conspiratorial culture has taken over, and there isn't pride in the United States. And I saw this. How proud are you of United States history? 18 to 34 year olds, 23% are proud of United States history. 18 to 34 year olds. Also, how does that compare to ages 65 and up? 59% of people 65 and up.

are extremely or very proud of United States history. 18 to 34 year olds, just 23% are. We have failed when it comes to teaching history as a positive experience for young people in the United States today. And I think it's actually the most significant failure in the country. Because if you do not have pride of country, then nothing else matters. The culture of young people today, because we have failed to teach them history properly, is such that they are ashamed of the history of the United States. 65 and up, 59% extremely very proud, 18 to 34 year olds, 23%. How do we fix this? Last week we were talking some about one of the issues that I think most troubles me in education, it's that we don't teach financial literacy. People don't understand how mortgages work. People don't understand interest rates. They don't understand what the interest rate is on a credit card. They don't understand how to pay off credit cards. They don't understand that a minimum balance payoff doesn't actually help you very much. Many of you have struggled through this. You've seen these numbers pile up. Certainly with student loans, people don't really understand how much they're taking out. You can end up six figures in debt going to school for a job that's only going to pay you $40,000 a year. The basic math doesn't add up. Financial literacy matters, hugely. But I would argue for the nation, the single most important other than literacy itself you need to be able to read is historical literacy. Because if you do not understand what this country has been, then how can you possibly understand where this country might go? And this was question two in the Wall Street Journal. How proud of you are of you are United States history? That huge gap between 18 to 34 year olds and 65 and up. And it directly ties into this. How important is patriotism to you? 18 to 34 year olds, just 18%. 65 and up 55%. You can't be patriotic. if you don't love American history. And I think this is such an important aspect. All of us. I went to an 80th birthday party yesterday. One of my old law professors was turning 80 years old. He's a practicing attorney in Nashville. Was an awesome event. His name, by the way, is Lee Barfield. Great, successful attorney. Saw Senator Marsha Blackburn there. She's in the middle of running for governor, but she took the time to come to his 80th birthday party in Nashville. And he was talking a lot about his personal history, as one does when they're about to be 80 years old, turning 80. My mom's going to have a birthday on Friday, by the way. People around that age are very, very proud to be American. And they're incredibly patriotic.

Think about the world in which they grew up in. They were born immediately in the aftermath of World War II. When those guys, Trump, Clinton, and George W. Bush were five years old, right as they were beginning the 1950s, everyone around the world saw America as a unique force for good. Much of what Trump is arguing make America great again is really just about trying to reclaim the moral authority and the patriotic feelings that characterized his youth, but also Bill Clinton's youth and also George W. Bush's youth. If you are 80 years old, like those three guys are, and like Lee Barfield, we were celebrating yesterday, like my mother-in-law, who also turned to 80 this year, I bet if you are 80 years old, we are nearly white, black, Asian, Hispanic, whatever age you are. I bet you're overwhelmingly patriotic, and I think that's connected to how history was taught to you. You can't be proud of your country if you're not proud of your history. Now, that doesn't mean that you don't recognize that there are tremendous amounts. of things that are imperfect, that didn't go as exactly you might have hoped that they would. All of us are flawed. All of us, I think more and more the older I get about the way that you characterize your life. Do you think about the ceilings? Lindsey Graham passed. And overwhelmingly, you're seeing people from across the political spectrum come out and say that he was a uniquely kind person. Uniquely in this country, of all countries, we believe in risk-taking and in the frontier pushing into new worlds. If we are teaching our kids that America can only be looked at through the prism of slavery. or that America can only be looked at through the times that we have failed. Is it any wonder that only 18% of 18 to 34 year olds are patriotic? Is it any wonder that 23% are extremely are very proud of American history? These are directly connected. I really do believe that we need to have a national focus on what is being taught to kids in history in particular. You know, math, but math isn't that complicated to teach. Everybody agrees what the quadratic equation is. Everybody remembers, I think everybody got taught, but in history, there's a lot of play in the joints. Some of you are history teachers, and you're listening to me right now. Just about everybody learned some history in school. You got that big book. You can teach anything. You can focus largely as you see fit. And if you choose to focus on the floor, the 1619 project.

My goodness, I don't think we recognize enough how calculated this attempt is to drive down patriotism by making people ashamed of United States history. I'm just telling you, when I saw this in the Wall Street Journal, it was a light bulb going off. How many people are even talking about this? How many people are even having a conversation at all about this? and the way that it is set up. I just see it. It's so clear to me. And leadership is important. Who the president of the United States is, who your governor is, who your senators are, your congressmen, your state reps, all those different things. But if they're speaking to an audience of young people that believes that America has failed, that believes that America is a story of futility and not a story of heroism, if they believe all of that, none of this else. Hardly even matters. Tearing down American history and our heroes, sometimes in 2020, literally tearing down the statues of our heroes and those who came before us, it is so intentional and it's working. And it's a long-range play. And if we do not focus on this, You can't protect or long survive in a country where people are not proud to live here and do not celebrate the successes of those who came before us. So I'm thinking about that in a big way. Part of it is America 250. But again, old school me looking at this Wall Street Journal poll. My goodness, it just jumps out right off the top. And it is so incredibly important. We come back, there's another little part here that I think is secondary to this. It's a question. America is a nation where people are not judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. That used to be something that a strong majority of Americans agreed with somehow over the last 12 or 14 years, and I think it's directly connected to history and the impact that we are having there. That overall situation has collapsed. So all of that you guys can react to, but I do think it's important. We'll share on clay and buck.com the story there. of exactly what's going on with that article so you can see this evidence for yourself, and so hopefully you can punch back against it. I want to tell you right now, if you were trying to make everything safer in your home, this can be very, very important, but you have young kids and you're somewhat a little bit concerned maybe about what might happen with those young kids. This is exactly what Sabre is designed to do. FBI study reveals home break-ins occur every 26 seconds.

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